


A Scotsman and an Irishman walk into a bard.

by fallencrest



Category: British Actor RPF, X-Men RPF
Genre: Accents, Acting, Angst, Bad Jokes, Humour, M/M, Press Tour, Sexual Tension, Swearing, dudes being lighthearted jerks to each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-23
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2018-02-05 19:59:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1830388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallencrest/pseuds/fallencrest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Michael Fassbender confesses to James McAvoy that he'll be doing a Scottish accent for the role of Macbeth and McAvoy laughs incredulously and offers to give him a masterclass. It doesn't quite happen like that but, when it comes down to the two of them, things never go to plan.</p><p>(Set from the end of DOFP filming, through the filming of Macbeth and the DOFP press tour afterwards.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Scotsman and an Irishman walk into a bard.

It becomes a sort of joke, after a while: “you could copy my accent.”

Michael laughs and shoves him in a way which has already become companionably comfortable, the first time James says it.

They're talking about Macbeth, of course.

 

   
“I've done it twice, you know,” James says, tipsiness fuelling the big-talk ego most guys get after they've had a few. “Just came off my west end run. I could coach you.”

He meets Michael's eye and starts to do the first speech that comes into his head. And it's comical, really, the way James commits to it, gazing at the pint glass in his hand as he begins “is this a dagger which I see before me,” sloshing a little beer onto the tabletop when he changes his grip at “Come, let me clutch thee.” Michael grins because it's hard not to.

“That could work, you know,” Michael says, with a little gesture at the pint glass, “the drunk Macbeth reading.”

“Shut up,” James says. Though he catches himself wondering for a minute if it might be genius. “That what they going for in your production?” he asks instead, unable to keep back the urge to jostle and joke. “You'd be good at it.”

“Nah,” Michael says, “they haven't quite caught onto my half-drunk genius yet. By the time we're shooting, maybe, but for now they're just saying they're going proper Scots, historical and military.”

James does that thing then, where he tries not to laugh. “You're going Scots?” he says. And then he looks away a little and says “fuck me, I know Americans can't tell the difference but –”

“As if it's so hard,” Michael says.

“Go on then, do it.” James says, gesturing with his glass at Michael. It doesn't spill this time, thanks to the rate he's drinking it at, but Michael watches it as though he's wary of getting drenched all the same.

“I'm not drunk enough,” Michael says, pushing away the terror at the thought of trying and playing at being relaxed instead. He leans back in his seat, takes a long swig out of his own glass and says, “Anyway, I've got ages.”

“You have to start practising sometime and I'm a good audience –” James says, pausing before he delivers his punchline: “I'll know if you fuck up.”

“Yeah, right. You know,” Michael says, with a quirked eyebrow which speaks the challenge before he does, “I'd like to see you do Irish.”

James opens his mouth as if he's about to do it, then he starts laughing and Michael laughs with him.

“You know,” James says, when he's caught his breath a little, “I saw a Brummie Maccers once, part of it anyway. I was doing research for the TV one I did and it was another modern setting, on a council estate, and anyway for about a month afterwards I swear I could do a perfect Brummie accent but only in iambic pentametre.” Michael's grinning at him like he's about to say something, “yeah, I know, not much to be proud of, but what I mean is that maybe you just need to practice doing it with the verse and it'll be easy.”

“Well, I was going to practice with the text, yeah.” Michael says because it's obvious but he's amused all the same by James' boasted one-time skill at delivering Shakespeare with a Brummie twist.

“You want to try repeating after me?” James says, like he's a showman opening up a word of delights.

“Not especially,” Michael says, taking another drink, though his amusement is clear from the twinkle in his eye.

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” James starts.

He doesn't get any farther before Michael cuts across him saying, “so you wanna teach me how to say two words?”

“Oh shut up, just being with me is a masterclass.”

Michael starts laughing and kicks him in the shin lightly because it's all basically a ridiculous joke and because casual plays at violence are easy and accepted between them now.

“You should just spend time with me,” James says, drawing himself up in his seat with a sort of feigned majesty; then, with a little less gravity, “You could copy my accent.”

“Yeah, and be a Glaswegian Macbeth in a feudal war. No-one'd question that at all.”

“Better than making him from-” James frowns, “where the fuck in Ireland are you from again?”

Michael starts laughing all over again. “Charming,” he says, “just charming, darling. Your wisdom knows no bounds.”

James grins at him and says, “but seriously, if you ever stop being a coward and want to practice, I'll give you notes.”

“I know you will,” he says “and I'm sure they'll be invaluable. Now drink up, we've got a 7am call.”

 

   
It was a stupid fucking suggestion but it doesn't stop Michael from following it, sometimes, a little. Besides, it's the easiest way to learn. You spend enough time around someone, anyone really, but especially someone you click with the way he and James had clicked way back on the First Class shoot, and it's easy to start picking up their mannerisms, echoing the rhythm of their speech like it's the melody of a song caught in your head and in your throat. It's easier than cribbing from an accent tape or someone else's performance. He'd learnt Ian McKellen, all proper BBC English with an edge of the coal dust of the north, from an old RSC tape (incidentally, also on Macbeth) but he learns James on nights at bars and waiting in between takes, shoving him in jest and repeating the odd remark in his head to savour the way the vowel sounds have their special cadence.

It isn't what he's going to use for Macbeth, he tells himself, some days. He isn't going to go on stage and try to be James. It'd be absurd. The James he knows is far from the Thane struggling with the wrongs he's done and those he's willing to do. And, besides, he thinks, there's too much of the city in his voice, that strange heat of exhaust fumes and raised voices over the bounding bass of club speakers.

But, at the same time, he has to tell himself it's for Macbeth. There's no reason to it otherwise. There's something too telling in the way he finds he's swallowed parts of James' voice without meaning to, if it isn't something he can use. He thought he'd gotten over mirroring with early crushes and learnt to moderate it with good friends but it's different, somehow, with James. Not a bad kind of different, not even that striking, not noticeable in the moment it happens, just easy. Easy in the same way that it's always been easy and natural to watch James, to put a hand on his shoulder, and to laugh with him even when he's made a really terrible joke. They work well together, in their roles and out of them, off-set and on. They're a good team and, if Michael listens a little too closely, gets a little too tangled in his words, the Macbeth thing's a plausible excuse.

 

   
Then there's the actual Macbeth thing. The actual Macbeth thing where he's surrounded by plenty of people with real Scottish accents and he has an accent coach for a couple of days but he still finds himself trying to imagine the words in James' voice.

He tries watching part of James' TV Macbeth on youtube but finds it's excised the Shakespearean text, rewritten it in modern language, so it can't help him find the proper stress on the word “syllable”. (He catches himself watching more of it than he meant to, anyway.) He can do “the last,” and he can do “recorded time,” but it all falls apart there, in the middle of the line. He should have let James drunkenly complete the speech that time, so that he could remember more than the echo of “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” though in all likelihood, he still wouldn't remember it. He would remember the strange solemnity that crept over James in that moment and how it changed so quickly back into a smile but nothing of the way his mouth had formed the words, even if he hadn't kept himself from looking.

 

   
He plays it off as casual, when he breaks and calls James up in between takes. And it is casual, really. If it were just a question of how he ought to pronounce a word or phrase, he'd be better off asking around the set. But he wants a break, a proper break, which isn't just the usual small reprieve with coffee and the same conversations with the same people. So, he calls James.

He can hear the smile in James' voice when he answers.

“Of all men else I have avoided thee,” James says, and Michael's trying to think of a line from the play to use as a rejoinder but then James says, “you are still there, right? Macbeth?”

“Yeah, I'm still doing Macbeth.” Michael says, as though it's been a long shoot – which it hasn't – nothing like as long as X-Men had been.

“You missing Quebec yet?”

“Sure,” Michael says, “I miss ordering coffee and beer in bad French while you'd laugh at me. Who wouldn't? But, hey, there's always the press junket.”

James makes a little caught laughing sound down the line, “because that went so well last time.”

It had though, they'd played off each other doing the First Class interviews, answering the good questions and the bad, each masking the other's less expert and amusing remarks by turning them into a whole new joke. If there were other considerations, too, Michael isn't about to be the one to mention them.

“Don't pretend you didn't love it,” he says.

“Oh, I did,” James replies, voice flooded with ironic camp, “especially when they implied we were fucking. Darling, what's not to love.”

Michael isn't sure what to make of that, knows if James were there with him and not 300 miles away down the line, he'd shove him and smile and say something about how James had always loved it, every single time. Instead he says, “You act like you'd be the one people would say was doing badly out of that arrangement.” And James gives him the genuine laugh he was looking for.

“Anyway, mate, what can I do you for today?” James asks, a moment later. “Just down for a chat or is there something darker afoot? You're not cancelling all those lovely interviews on me, are you? Not running off to Timbuktu to film some new project and bailing on us all?”

Michael smiles, “The lawyers it'd take to get me out of that would be more than I'm worth – and, besides, the Timbuktu crew say I'm worth waiting for.”

James makes the obvious remark then, obviously can't help himself, says: “I bet your mum used to tell you that, too.”

And Michael knows if James were there there would need to be some display of affectionate physical violence at that – or at least a hand ruffling James' hair in a playful act of unkindness.

“But no, really,” James says, when Michael stays silent, “what the fuck do you want?”

Michael's still smiling because, fuck, if that isn't just typical James, and he says, “Well, I was going to take you up on your offer of a masterclass but if you don't have time, I'll just-” and he gestures like he's going to hang up the phone, even though James can't see him. It's probably a good thing James can't see him – because he looks ridiculous. Torn-up, rustic, feudal war gear and too much battle make-up, twinned with a smartphone and coffee in a cardboard cup, standing under an insubstantial bit of plastic sheeting to stay out of a light drizzle – it's not his best look and it's the sort of thing he can just imagine seeing in a paparazzi photo. If it weren't for the bolstering effect of James' company down the phone-line, he thinks he might even be rocking a look deserving of a Sad Keanu-style internet meme. The thought of it, absurdly, makes him smile a little more.

“Oh yeah,” James says, “I knew you'd come crawling back.”  
 

 

It doesn't become a regular thing after that but he does call more than once. Once he fakes a crisis – which probably really is a crisis – because he's convinced the cast and crew are all only feigning thinking he's doing a good job and he knows James won't bullshit him.

“I sound like a comedy fucking Scotsman. Like I'm doing an impression for a punchline,” he says, all his anger and annoyance turned inwards but dissipating when he hears James laugh.

“I can't wait to hear it,” James says. And then, when Michael doesn't quite open up and trial the lines on him right away, he says “Mate, I can laugh at you now or I can laugh at you at the bloody cinema, and I'm pretty sure I know which one you'd prefer.”

And Michael caves easily, opens up and tells James about the line he's struggling with.

James doesn't laugh but gives him tips on how to tone it down a little, keep it tight and authentic, gives him the oddly reassuring reminder of how the part wasn't written for a Scottish voice and how that makes it harder because it doesn't provide the obvious cues but that that in itself ought to save him from ending up sounding like a nine-year-old who's just learnt to say 'he didnee go' in a broad Scots accent and now thinks he can walk around anywhere he goes and sound convincingly Scottish when he really just sounds like a dumb twat taking the piss.

“Just try not to sound like an Englishman and you'll be fine,” James says, before he hangs up.

“I think I can do that.” Michael says and he does think he can, for all that he's aware that Shakespeare makes him want to, sometimes, because that's the way he's used to hearing it done and maybe a little because he's lived in London too long.

James is back in London throughout most of the Macbeth shoot, Michael knows. He's back in between Frankenstein and the press circuit and he's reading scripts and being a parent and Michael could almost be jealous, given that he's spending his days on a foggy remote island in the drear cold of a Scottish early spring, but somehow it's too alien and remote a thought for him right now to get remotely jealous of.

 

   
He gets a late night call from James one night which he neither expects nor returns.

He saves the message but he tells himself it's for accent practice, since the message starts with James mumbling something about not being able to sleep and then something about how he oughtn't to be the sleepless one and then he does this slow and mournful rendition of the act 2, scene 2 speech about sleep.

“Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep,'” James' voice says, in the hushed tone of someone who doesn't want to wake the sleeper in the next room, “the innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care; the death of each day's life; sore labour's bath; balm of hurt minds; great nature's second course; chief nourisher in life's feast—” and then he sort of laughs a soft laugh, and says “that's what you get for doing 80 performances.”

Then the message cuts out and the cheerful recorded voice of the answerphone operator announces “end of messages.”

Michael feels a regret then which isn't just about the fact that he's already filmed that scene already so he won't be able to use James' version as a cue. Not that he'd gone for a slow and half-asleep delivery style in the scene – or that anybody would, in context. But he likes James' version all the more for that fact that it has none of the panicked urgency Macbeth needs to have in the scene. It's a little island of something else, he thinks.  
 

 

Back in London, afterwards, he gets less downtime than he'd like before he's off again but it's the press tour and it has its perks, for all that he hates the process of being ferried between countries and cities and packed into hotel rooms with tacky backdrops, being introduced to a myriad of different interviewers who all have blogs or websites these days, hardly a smart major publication in sight. There are the TV gigs, too, of course, though they're easier, in their way, because you get a decent bit of time to relax in the studio and you only have to give one five minute interview at a time. They even generally prime you in advance with all the questions that they're going to ask.  
   
The questions are repetitive and, when they're not, they're just plain bad, and he isn't sure he'd manage to keep smiling and playing along if he didn't have James to play off. Not all their interviews are together though, sometimes they're each in their own little room, dealing one-by-one with the roster of interviewers who're chaperoned in and out with terrifying regularity. Those days, even though they ought to have had enough of one another, they text in between interviews and James will say “watch out for the little guy in the glasses, he's a weird one,” and they advise each other of weird questions they've been asked so far so the other can prepare for what's to come.

Though the solo sessions are, arguably, the worse, they're also the ones which lead to the best cast-reunion drinks in the evening, where they all let loose and swap stories and laugh about how ridiculous this whole thing is.

 

   
“You've given up pretending to like the film, haven't you?” James says, after a particularly long day. “You have, I can tell.”

“Well,” Michael says, “it's not exactly art.”

“Very few things are, mate. And, fuck, it might be shit, I can't tell, but it doesn't look good if you go out and tell the journalists that.”

“I wouldn't go out and tell the journalists that.”

“You sure? Because there was a point, last time around, where you got really bad at hiding that you thought that.”

Michael laughs. “I don't hate it. And I don't think it's shit. I'm just bored of pretending like I think this comic book movie we've made is the cutting edge of art and culture in the twenty-first century.”

“Well, at least you've got me.” James says, going for optimism, and adding, as he lifts his drink, “and the bottle.”

“And the bottle,” Michael says, with an enthusiastic toast and a loud clank of glass.

They both grin and keep drinking and while the next day's early start hurts more than it strictly ought to, it's basically worth it. Not least because they get drunk and loose and impulsive enough that the flirtation is more heady and less like a joke than usual. And, god, all through filming Future Past, he'd really thought it was just a joke, even though it was a joke that had crossed a line before and might easily do so again.

He lets himself enjoy it, like the pleasant buzz of the alcohol and the unusual quiet of the empty hotel bar, until the bar gets closed down and it's empty and silent and they have their moment, in the lift, where they almost wind up agreeing to go back to James' room and open something from the mini fridge. It only gets as far as almost before they both seem to realise that they know what happens next and they spook. Michael claps James on the shoulder when they say goodnight and James grins.

 

Neither of them makes it to breakfast the next morning but the runners pick up coffee and muffins from Starbucks and they manage to attain some level of articulacy by the time their second joint-interview of the morning kicks in.

 

 

They don't talk about Macbeth much, except when James asks him how long it's likely to be before he sees the result of all that labour and finally gets to laugh at it.

Michael shoves him then, affectionately, and James shoves back, and the next interviewer who comes in finds them laughing and exchanging occasional kicks to each other's shins like they think it's the best joke in the world.  
 

 

There's also the time when they end up as a big cast group at a bar and James announces “you know what Michael's just done,” and tells them all about him doing the fucking Scottish play and pretending to be fucking Scottish and Michael laughs then and spills all the other stuff he mostly hadn't told James about before, about the make-up and the long shooting days and nights and the Isle of fucking Skye where there is resolutely nothing to do.

“I read a lot of scripts,” he says, grinning, “and practised my accent.” He'd spent time in the one pub near the B&B he'd been staying in, too, listening for the lilt of the native tongue, but he doesn't say that because it sounds that bit too much like he's taking himself too seriously and he doesn't want to tip the scales so they're laughing at him and not with him.

“And he called me every night and cried,” James says, all sad melodrama.

“More like you called me every night and cried,” Michael says.

It's not his strongest return jab but when James asks “why the fuck would I do that?” he gets in a better hit.

“Well, I wasn't going to tell all these fine upright ladies and gentleman, but we all know it was because you missed my cock.”

And there are “whoa”s and “steady on”s from the assembled crowd and Michael thinks for a minute that James might actually punch him from the way he doesn't laugh or come up with a joke of his own but then he says, “Nah, if I need that, I can just watch Shame, mate.”

And then everyone laughs, Michael and James included.

It all seems fine after that, stabilised and holding, except for how the eye contact lasts a little too long and is a little too dewy and nostalgic to be sensible and it kind of makes Michael want to punch James the way he thinks James wanted to hit him a moment before.

It's stupid because most of the jokes don't hurt or, even if they do, they only hurt as long as it takes to get a return hit in. These ones hurt though. They didn't at first, they'd just been stupid and absurd and ridiculous, even after it was hard to say they were unsubstantiated. But now they make him want to kiss James or punch him or both and, judging by the way James can't keep it all on an even keel either, he doesn't think that he's alone in that.

It's not that it's hard not to sleep with someone, even when you both want to. If anything, it's too easy. It's certainly easier than finding an excuse to make it happen. And they went the whole way through filming subsisting mainly on a sort of joyous energy at being around each other again and going through a hectic ensemble haze of bb gun tournaments and stupidly late nights and early calls and far too long in hair and make-up. But it burns, somehow, now that they're seeing each other in snatches, some weeks intensely, others barely at all – because James goes to Brazil without him and then they're back in London with three days off and it would seem ridiculous to call one another.

 

   
They're almost at the end of the press tour when James brings up Macbeth again. They're in another hotel bar, in another city, and it's quiet again, and they're both tired, too languid with the fatigue of the long stint of the press tour to be making the kind of jokes they normally would or to push things anywhere uncomfortable.  
James says, this time, bubbling out of nowhere in the uncharacteristic silence that's formed between them, “I bet you did an excellent job, you know.” And when Michael looks up and meets his eye, he says “With Macbeth.”

He pauses before he carries on: “you're a really good actor. I mean, accent or no, I reckon you must've done a stand up job.”

Michael smiles. There's part of him that wants to give into the sentimentality of it all and say he's going to miss this – which is at least partly true – though he shouldn't miss the way he feels a little bit sick to his stomach when James smiles like that because he knows what it means and knows he shouldn't, knows he shouldn't push.

He lets himself bask for a moment in the feeling he knows he has to push away before he says, “call me up and tell me that without laughing when you've seen it.” He realises as soon as he's said it that it just makes him sound defensive and insecure which, really, he isn't. He knows he did a decent job and, sure, okay, he hasn't had the official seal of approval from James “genuine Scotsman” McAvoy yet but, even if he never gets it, he isn't worried about that, not that at least.

“I reckon that's a promise I can reasonably make,” James says, still with a soft kind of smile.

Michael wants to tell him to stop or wants to tell him it's late (it isn't, not really) and make his run for the door because there are only two ways this can end and neither of them is going to make either of them happy in the long run.

He goes for saying it's getting late and it doesn't fucking save him (of course it doesn't) because James follows him to the lift and when they get in it James says, “I fucking missed you, you know.

“I know it's fucking ridiculous but I fucking missed you – even though we live in the same fucking city and even though I probably shouldn't. I–”

And maybe it's a bit of self-loathing that makes him do it, or maybe it's a bit of selfishness, or just plain stupidity, but Michael crowds James into the corner of the lift and kisses him.

He wishes it were a slower lift or that they were staying on a higher floor, because James responds with lips and tongue and hands, and the doors open far too fast behind him and the doors stay open, whilst neither of them quite seems willing to stop.

If they stop, the inevitable reminder of reality will dawn and they will have to go their separate ways again, the way they're always going to have to go.

The doors close again and the lift doesn't move. No-one else has called the damn thing, so they stay a while, and James is fondling his arse with the weirdest kind of urgency, when the lift starts moving again and they pull apart like they've been stung and they both start laughing and can't stop, even after the lift car arrives back down in the lobby and a little old lady's stood there waiting for them to get out before she gets in and they just keep laughing.

James buries his face in the collar of Michael's shirt, as Michael says something charming about how he thinks they must've not have noticed the lift was going down when they got in, and he settles his hand on James' waist and laughs soundlessly as he pushes the button for their floor again.

It should have been a 'saved by the bell' moment. It should have been the thing that stopped them, only they're buzzing with the adrenaline of it, still laughing, and James half drags him with a hand gripping his belt once they're out of the lift and let it never be said that Michael Fassbender knows what's best for him. (He really, really doesn't.)

 

“God,” James says, “I really didn't,” but he doesn't get the rest of the words out as somehow, between them, they fumble the room door open and stumble inside. 

It's as though they both know if they stop touching each other the spell will be broken, so they don't stop touching, and they don't stop desperately kissing. James' hands cup Michael's face and then run through his hair and Michael's own hands find their way to the button of James' jeans. He knows he shouldn't be the one pushing it, knows he should pull back and let James cool off and remember how he's going to regret this but, fuck, if Michael thinks he could ever regret this. 

James loses co-ordination, stops kissing, gasps, when Michael gets a hand on his cock which, really, isn't that just the right kind of gratifying? And James lets himself collapse back onto the bed, sitting on the edge of it, head tipped back something beautiful as Michael gets in a few inelegant tugs before he's pulling down James' jeans and boxers both and going down on him. 

James gasps out, “oh fuck,” and “I want,” and Michael makes him say it, wrings the words out of him with a sly smile and a pretense at ignorance. He's brimming with lust and an absurd sense of victory, because he's done denying himself what he wants, just the same way James is. And James tells him what he wants.

“I want you,” he says, “I always fucking wanted you.” And just because he's sweating and red-faced and holding Michael's wrist tight enough to bruise doesn't mean it isn't true. 

Michael kisses James' neck and barely manages to stop himself from ruining it all by leaving a mark. But, if he doesn't get everything he wants, he gets most of it; gets James to beg without even the hint of a joke about it; gets to put his hands places he mostly only gets to dream about. 

It ends blissful and sweaty, the way these things always do. And they lie there awhile afterwards, naked atop the sheets, and James holds onto Michael's wrist again like he's an anchor and the room is spinning which maybe it is, for all Michael has a handle on what's real right now.

James kisses him before he goes back to his own room, that soft, easy, languorous sort of a kiss which comes with a slow thrumming ache and a promise of more.

“Bastard,” Michael says, under his breath, just before he's out of earshot, but he's smiling. They're both smiling.

 

 

The last few days of the tour are easier, somehow, lighter. And neither of their smiles falter, even when they finally land back in London and get into the long queue for a taxi, and James insists on making him promise that he'll call this time.

“If I don't fucking see you until Apocalypse, I'm going to annihilate your pale Irish arse,” he says with a surprising degree of seriousness.

“I don't think you meant that the way it sounded,” Michael says, grinning from under his sunglasses and his hat.

James splutters a little bit and bumps his shoulder against Michael's in something less than a show of boyish violence, and says “well, yeah, that'd be a different kind of threat and I'm not sure it'd work out the way I want it to, since it's probably not much of an incentive.”

Michael keeps his mouth closed and tries to conceal his laughter but mostly fails.

“But I mean it, okay? You fucking call me sometime before I have to correct your Macbeth accent down the phone at you or I'll start to think all those sweet nothings you whispered in my ear were lies.”

Michael is still smiling and almost laughing because it's easier to do that than to let himself be sad about it. “Okay, okay, it's a deal. I'll call you, you'll call me. Everyone's happy and our on-set reunion might not raise so many eyebrows next time.”

“I liked our on-set reunion,” James says, just to be difficult.

“Yeah, yeah, now get in the fucking cab,” Michael says, since they're stood now at the front of the queue and the cabbie pulled up in front of them looks a little impatient.

“I'll miss you, too,” James says, as he lifts his hand luggage onto the seat neat to him and ducks inside.

And, fuck, if Michael doesn't know that odds are he won't see James again until Apocalypse – or until hell freezes over or whatever – but he finds himself giving an amused sort of wave anyway. And he's glad that, when the franchise comes back around, he'll have at least one thing to look forward to.  
 

 

The week Macbeth hits theatres, he gets a late night call. He also gets a text which says “you were bloody brilliant” but the phone call is James doing the “is this a dagger that I see before me” speech and getting almost halfway through before he says “fuck” and then “what the fuck is the next line?” and then he's laughing down the line, and going “well, you did a better job than me, mate. Hope the critics are giving you what you deserve.”

Michael doesn't delete the message but he doesn't listen to it over right away, either, just lies back in bed and lets himself to breathe deep and smile. He thinks maybe he'll call back this time.


End file.
